Secrets to the Grave

97

“Bruce Bordain?” Vince said. “Bruce thought he was Haley’s father?”

Gina nodded wearily. “It’s a long story.”

“You need to tell me the short version of it now, Gina,” Vince said.

Bruce Bordain had been in a hurry to catch a plane the day before. If he had left the country, they couldn’t lose any more time than they already had getting on his trail.

“I’m so tired,” she said.

“I know you’re tired,” Vince said, glancing out the glass wall to check for anyone watching. He’d gotten tossed out of her room once already for overtaxing her. “But this is so important, Gina. We want to bring Marissa’s killer to justice, right?”

“Yes,” she said. Her respiration had begun to quicken. “Of course.”

“Was Marissa involved with Bruce?”

“Yes. For about a year.”

“And at some point she told him she was pregnant.”

“She was,” Gina said.

“Gina, I saw photographs of you and Marissa just a couple of months before Haley was born. She wasn’t pregnant.”

Frustration and exhaustion furrowed her brow. Another few tears squeezed out between her lashes. “I’m so tired.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m really sorry,” Vince said, “but this is so important, Gina. Is Haley Marissa’s daughter? Is she Bruce Bordain’s daughter?”

“No.”

Marissa had been pregnant, but Haley wasn’t her daughter, nor was Bruce Bordain her father. Vince swore under his breath. Now he’d opened an industrial-size can of worms and his witness was running out of gas.

“But Marissa was blackmailing the Bordains?” he said.

“You make it sound so dirty,” she said. “It wasn’t like that. She was trying to do something good. For Haley.”

“Gina, Bruce Bordain has been paying for four years for a child that isn’t his. Did he find that out?”

“He might have,” she admitted in a small voice. “Marissa was tired of it. She’d had it with Milo trying to manipulate her and treating her like she was a doll to play with. At first, she had wanted him to pay for what he’d done to her. But it wasn’t worth it.”

“What had he done to her?” Vince asked.

Tears ran from the corners of Gina Kemmer’s closed eyes. She was slipping away from him, slipping away from the bad memories.

“Gina?”

“Mr. Leone?” The nurse supervisor came into the room with her hands on her hips. “Don’t make me throw you out of here again.”

Vince staved her off with one finger raised. “Just one more question.”

“Mr. Leone ...”

“Gina, what had he done to her?”

He had to lean in close to hear her.

“He killed her ...”